Exile Tibetan leader suggests autonomy as solution for Tibet’s environmental crisis

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Dr President Lobsang Sangay of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) at Dharamsala, India, on Mar 7 speaking to a group of Tibet supporting Czech Republic MPs about the seriousness of the environmental devastation in Chinese ruled Tibet. (Photo courtesy: Tibet.Net)

(TibetanReview.net, Mar08’19) – President Lobsang Sangay of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) at Dharamsala, India, has on Mar 7 spoken to a group of Tibet supporting Czech Republic MPs about the seriousness of the environmental devastation in Chinese ruled Tibet and how autonomy for Tibet could help alleviate the situation.

“China has been upgrading the infrastructure in this fragile region. The big dam projects in Tibet pose a threat to the fragile ecological balance of the region,” CTA’s Tibet.net Mar 7 quoted Sangay as telling members of the Czech Parliamentary Group for Tibet.

“Hence China must not be allowed to unilaterally impose its will on the people of the region and use it as a bargaining tool to pressurize other countries,” he has said, referring to China’s building of dams in Tibet as a strategic tool to create trouble for downstream countries such as India.

He has accused China of implementing flawed environmental and developmental policies that had turned the resource-rich Tibetan Plateau with its fragile ecosystem into a hub of reckless mining and dam building activities. “This not only changes the water map of Asia for the worse but also contributes to an environmental crisis, which in turn contributes to climate change across Asia. The rising temperatures on the roof of the world make Tibet both a driver and amplifier of global warming.”

He has also said, “Perhaps this is a time when practical and real autonomy for Tibet becomes all the more relevant as Tibetans know their region better and are the first to be affected by climate change.”

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